In the Aug. 11 biosolids article, Jeanette Best is seriously misleading readers about the contents and safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer.

Biosolids are not just human waste; they are a complex mixture of hazardous industrial waste, disease-causing pathogens and anything else that thousands of businesses, hospitals, metal-plating shops and households discharge into the city’s sewage treatment plants every day.

These pollutants are removed from the wastewater and end up, concentrated, in the resulting biosolids. The better the process works, the dirtier the biosolids. The federal Clean Water Act defines biosolids as a pollutant.

Putting industrial waste on land is not recycling; it is transferring manmade toxic chemicals from cities to rural areas, where this waste has killed cattle, sickened hundreds of neighbors, polluted wells and permanently poisoned good farmland.

Farmers concerned about the long-term effects of using biosolids should get fully informed about the risks. For more information, visit www.sludgefacts.org.